‘We didn’t know to pitch a tent in the shade and woke up every morning as red as lobsters’
and I suspect that one of the things that will happen is that kind of feeling will come back and the reclaiming of holidays on our own soil.”
At 73, Tony accepts he’s not getting any younger but he relished the leg of the journey in sub-zero temperatures in the Arctic Circle.
“I really hadn’t spent a long time in minus 15 degrees before and I hadn’t realised how you have to handle yourself but I just about survived it,” he admits. “In the Arctic, I climbed a mountain and it was the first time I had done any yomping in deep snow and that was exhausting.
“When you’re older, you’re always in danger of falling over and breaking a hip or your knee but luckily I emerged unscathed and I even had no twisted ankle.
“I still feel invincible at my age and that nothing can touch me. But my wife and my daughters and son (from his first marriage to Mary Shepherd) accuse me of that. Do they say, ‘Nothing is ever too much?’ Er, they say ‘Actually it is’.” Tony, a former member of Labour’s governing National Executive Committee until he quit last year, is not happy about the lockdown.
“A lot of people in their early 70s, myself included, really kicked off at this idea that when you get to 70 that suddenly you are designated an old person, who is more vulnerable to an illness than someone who is say 20 years younger than you,” he says. “However if you think of a condition that a lot of people of all ages keep themselves in, it seems to me to be a remarkable example of ageism. “I understand exactly why they did it because they were scared of older people getting ill but it was a blanket assumption, which I don’t think was very healthy.
“Once the virus is over, and we can start looking at who we are again, I think one of the things that older people will want to speak out about is that it was absolutely right that the infirm and elderly should have been specially looked after.
“We have to draw a line somewhere, but on the other hand it was pretty bloody absurd.”
IT’S nearly seven years since Tony – best known for playing Baldrick in the BBC comedy series Blackadder – was knighted. Is he referred to as “Sir Tony?” “None of my mates and the people that I work with ever do. So if people come into my orbit who do, everyone around me is snorting and giggling,” he says.
One question he does always get asked is if there will be a new Blackadder series, which was written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, with subsequent episodes penned by Curtis and Ben Elton.
“I haven’t spoken to any of the Blackadder crew since this has been going on but I am sure that I will,” says Tony. “But there are all sorts of reasons why there isn’t going to be another one.
“We went out on such a high how would it be possible to recreate the way that made our audience feel? However good the new one would be, I’m sure people would say: ‘Oh, it’s not as good as the last episode of series 4.’
“Although, in saying that, I think my bank manager would really love there to be another one!”
●●Around The World By Train With Tony Robinson starts tonight on C5 at 8pm